In the slaves and the masters. “He

In The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, the
slaveholders use their religion to justify their actions. Using their
Christianity/religion is very hypocritical considering what the Bible is all
about. Douglass demonstrates in his book how religion negatively affected the
slaves and the masters.

“He made
the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed
morning, noon, and night.”1 This
quote proves how hypocritical the slaveholders are. They pray morning, noon,
and night, but in between are beating up and starving slaves. Many of these
slaveholders are the ones who take an interest in religious activities, however
frequently are the ones who treat their slaves more awful. In the book it
demonstrates how slaveholders became crueler after their conversions to
Christianity. Douglass thought that Master Thomas being associated with
religious faith was going to improve his character. Douglass states in the
story that the conversion affected Master Thomas in a bad way, “If it had any effect on his character, it
made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been
a much worse man after his conversion than before.”2
After his conversion Thomas finds religious reasons to support his cruelty and awful
punishments. That is ironic because a Christian should be nice to
their slaves, but as stated in the story the non-religious slaveholders were
nicer to their slaves than religious ones.

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Slaveholders
are quick in punishing slaves for the smallest violations of the bible, but are
willing to twist scripture around to justify their own horrendous actions. Not
long after Douglass started living with Mr. Wilson in St. Michaels, he began
partaking in religious exercises and Douglass starts to see change in Mr.
Wilson. The book shows how Mr. Wilson used the bible to justify his
dehumanizing actions towards the slaves. “I have seen him tie up a lame young
woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the
warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would
quote this passage of Scripture — “He that knoweth his master’s will, and
doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”3

Slaveholders claim they’re Christian, but
don’t allow their slaves to participate in the learning of the New Testament. “We
met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks, both class-leaders, with
many others, came upon us with sticks and other missiles, drove us off, and
forbade us to meet again.”4
This quote shows how the white men are very hypocritical when it comes to their
Christianity. Slaveholders should want their slaves to partake in religious
exercises or to be Christian. However, since they twist around the words of the
Bible to justify their actions; they don’t want them to learn the Bible or to
learn how to read at all. The slaves studying the Bible can be threatening
because it can enable them to act out. So the quote also shows that the white
Christians were selfish in destroying the Sabbath school because they don’t
want anything to meddle with slavery.

Adding to the hypocrisy, there were
slaveholders like Mr. Covey. “Added
to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion — a
pious soul — a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church.”5
Based on this quote, Mr. Covey is portrayed as a good man, but he was one of
the worst, he was known to break slaves. Douglass had been with Covey for a
week and already had been whipped. Mr. Covey was a man focused on religion, yet
his actions were altogether different than a man who is supposedly religious.

On the whole, the slaveholders have twisted
their religion to rationalize their awful behavior causing them to be very
hypocritical. Frederick has some very strong points in justifying this. His
book really shows the selfishness of some of these cruel white men and how
religion negatively affected both the masters, by making them crueler, and the
slaves, by being punished harder than before by the masters.

1 Frederick
Douglass. 2017. “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American
slave.” Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
1. Points of View Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed November
30, 2017) page 47.